I was very pleased to do the steel symbol,” remembers David Gentleman, “because nationalised is what it should be.” The 86-year-old artist and designer is reflecting on one of the fascinating if less predictable fallouts from the current crisis in the steel industry – a debate about the health, importance and viability of British industrial design.
Here’s the immediate context. From the late 1960s onwards the image of British Steel became intertwined with David Gentleman’s iconic “S” shaped branding: an attractively virile reminder of the ambitions of the “White Heat” era. Now, in a twist of fate, financiers Greybull Capital have promised to resurrect the name “British Steel” in their takeover of parts of Tata Steel UK. Presumably in part because the use of a name associated with nationalised industry reassures in a way the term “specialists in turnaround investments” does not. Indian ownership is out and British Steel is (sort of) back.
The longer trajectory of Gentleman’s logo, as well as his career, could stand as something of a cautionary tale for the path of politics, industry and industrial design over the past fifty years or so. The logo was created in 1969 to give momentum to the newly formed British Steel Corporation, which had been created to bring strategic investment, as well as rationalisation, to an industry that had fragmented and stagnated in private hands. Gentleman’s “S” developed out of a visualisation of the manufacturing process; it resembled sheets of steel undergoing a strength test.
This branding work was part of an accomplished and at times heart-wrenchingly utopian programme of cultural activity.One of the many films sponsored by the industry, Design in Steel (1973), features a succession of artists and designers explaining how advances in production will underpin everything from the future of aesthetics to satellites. The strange richness of the cultural legacy reflects the fact that when the British Steel Corporation was formed, it was the largest steel manufacturer in the non-Communist world.
Source: newstatesman.com